Seventy Times Seven: The Power of Forgiveness

by Johann Christoph Arnold, J.I. Packer (Foreword by)

Tells stories of real people scarred by crime, betrayal, abuse, and war, and how they used forgiveness to heal themselves and achieve peace of mind

Genres: Nonfiction

173 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

About the author

People have come to expect sound advice from Johann Christoph Arnold, an award-winning author with over two million copies of his twelve books in print in more than twenty languages. A noted speaker and writer on marriage, parenting, and end-of-life issues, Arnold was a senior pastor of the Bruderhof, a movement of Christian communities, until his death in April 2017.

Arnold’s message was shaped by encounters with great peacemakers such as Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, César Chavez, and John Paul II. Together with paralyzed police officer Steven McDonald, Arnold started the Breaking the Cycle program, working with students at hundreds of public high schools to promote reconciliation through forgiveness. This work also brought him to conflict zones from Northern Ireland to Rwanda to the Middle East. Closer to home, he served as chaplain for the local sheriff’s department.

Born in Great Britain in 1940 to German refugees, Arnold spent his boyhood years in South America, where his parents found asylum during the war; he immigrated to the United States in 1955. He and his wife, Verena, have eight children and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Reviews

[booklady · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read this before, but we were talking about forgiveness in our class and so I wanted to get this out and reread it. It contains excellent stories about forgiveness, which are so important. Each story, each act, word and forgiving thought is unique and heals a wound somewhere. Some small and hidden but all important. There is excellent emphasis on human compassion and forgiveness, but at first, I was concerned there was not enough on Divine, which given this book's philosophical and psychological basis is understandable.

As true forgiveness comes from above, it is thus mysterious and unaccountable. It is sometimes referred to as Misericordia or God's Merciful Heart, the source from which all mercy and forgiveness flow. If we ignore this, human forgiveness has less value, like food without proper nourishment. It would still fill the stomach, but without the required nutrients, eating becomes, if not pointless, less helpful. God's gifts to us underlie everything in this world and are all that is, good, though we see not His Hand in them, nor acknowledge Him, nor give Him thanks. Nevertheless, He is Author, Creator, Redeemer and Merciful Heart. When in need of forgiveness and/or help in forgiving a brother/sister, ask His help as His Son, Jesus, has already died for the forgiveness of all.

However, as I came to the end of the book, Mr. Arnold does a beautiful job bringing God's tripartite role into the discussion of forgiveness in a way which is, I believe, amenable to Christians of all denominations. Highly recommended.

[Joseph · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wasn't really impressed with this book. It was okay at best.

EVALUATION OF THEOLOGY
On the one hand, most of what he said wasn't wrong. Letting go of anger and not harboring totally justified anger and bitterness is the right thing to do. Showing kindness to those who have wronged us is absolutely the right thing to do; it is one of the sign of being a new creature in Christ. Nothing itself is all that off.

On the other hand, I took issue with several aspects of this book. There was a lot of talk about "forgiveness," but the focus throughout most of the book was almost entirely on why forgiving others is good for you. It was more of a Christian-lite self-help book than anything else. We should forgive because it is good for us. If you don't let go of your anger, it will consume you, so it's better to forgive. That was the main message throughout.

This leads into the next issue: we don't get a real feeling for what forgiveness even is. In some cases, to forgive simply amounts to not being angry anymore, it seems, and that is not what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not just not seeking vengeance and leaving it up to God. You can do that and still desire the other person be harmed; that’s why Romans 12:19, when admonishing against seeking vengeance, says that the reason is not because we don’t want vengeance, but because God will avenge us and repay the wrongdoer - We don't seek vengeance because God will do it. The Bible never calls that “forgiveness,” because that is meaningless as far as forgiveness goes. Forgiving does benefits us, but only because to do it is selfless, only because it doesn’t in itself benefit us. Like any good deed, we are rewarded because we do something for someone else, and not for ourselves. Now, because the fact that there is divine judgment and that God comforts us with this fact throughout the Bible is completely ignored, I cannot say how Arnold reconciles this with calls to forgive. But regarding the unrepentant wicked whom we do not seek vengeance against but for whose doom we will praise God (e.g. Revelation 19:1-3), surely God doesn't forgive us in that way! And yet, when we are told to forgive other Christians at least, that is exactly how we are to forgive (Ephesians 4:32). Forgiveness is not just letting go of anger for our sake, but genuinely releasing the other person from the debt they owe in their wrongdoing.

This sort of self-centered form of "forgiveness" where it's all about us and letting go of bitterness is way too prevalent within the church, and it is one of the reasons the visible church has been falling apart for centuries. Believers who have had fallings out, where one has wronged another, never really reconcile. One "forgives," but only in that they let go of bitterness. Reconciliation (which is not always possible, as it requires both parties), compassion, mercy, not shunning a person forever, these things are not part of the equation, it seems, when Christian forgiveness comes into play. But that is not how God forgives us! That is not forgiving from the heart (Matthew 18:35)! Even an unbeliever knows what forgiveness looks like. It is only in Christianese that we, since we must apparently must "forgive," have made forgiveness kind of meaningless. And this book, though far more tenderhearted than those who bite and devour other believers this way, helps to perpetuate this attitude through its reasoning.

Now, some of the examples do fit the bill off mercy and compassion that make forgiveness mean anything. For example, one involves a man who, as a boy, was the victim of a brutal attempted murder. As an adult, when the man who had harmed him sought his forgiveness, he truly forgave him, even befriending the man. Others were less clear, as the perpetrator did not seek any sort of reconciliation, but the person nonetheless showed mercy. One example involved a woman whose daughter was murdered who then helped spare the life of the unrepentant murder (who was eligible for the death penalty).

Regarding mercy, I think mercy is one of the biggest things overlooked. It's not that it is never mentioned. All the right things are mentioned (the gospel, Jesus, God's forgiveness, compassion). However, these things aren't central. It is all about the individual reading the book freeing themselves. Those good things are mentioned but never really appealed to in any meaningful way. The book scarcely goes into what the Bible says (and never in-depth). It doesn't appeal to compassion, to mercy, to the supernatural love that God fills us with that allows us as Christians to ask the jury to not execute the murderer of our child, or to come to accept and care for someone who once tried to kill you but then repents. God is mentioned every now and then, but he is not central to any of it. It isn't about radically changing your heart, as a believer, so that you can genuinely care about even the wicked (and especially about your brother who repents). It's about freeing yourself, and God sometimes is mentioned.

Also, there is no distinction between the repentant and unrepentant, or between believer and unbeliever. There is no real explanation of how we come to forgive, or how it should manifest itself. It largely just consists of “they forgave…and so should you.”

NOTE: Arnold gave no explanation of the tension between our love of God's justice against the wicked and the fact that we, as forgiven sinners, are to forgive, but I will. We should do as Jesus said. We should pray for the wicked, and do good to them. We should hope that God saves them. When we can show mercy (as some examples I mentioned did), we should. And if they repent and come to Jesus, we should accept them as part of the family of God. But if they don't, we are comforted by the fact that God will avenge us. The wicked will either repent and turn from their evil and become part of our family (which is ideal), or they will get everything they deserve. Either way, we can be comforted by the fact that evil will never win and they will not get away with it. The man who rapes and murders a little girl may be redeemed and remade and forgiven. If, however, he fades away laughing in the face of her heart-broken parents, he won't get the last laugh. It may sound contradictory to show kindness and mercy and hope a person gets saved while being comforted by the thought that God will destroy them if they don’t, but if you can't handle tension, you should find a simpler, cleaner, more orderly religion than Christianity (but please, don't do that!).


EVALUATION OF READABILITY
On the one hand, the pages are relatively short and the book makes for a quick read, in terms of total hours spent reading it.

On the other hand, this book can be hard to read in just one or two sittings because of the content. It isn't that it is a hard message (at least it wasn't for me); it was just that this book is really, really depressing. The bulk of it is story after story of somebody who suffered some sort of horrible cruelty at the hands of another, who then "forgave" them. I guess we're supposed to be encouraged because they forgave and were able to turn things around in their lives, but it's really heavy handed with it. It's hard not to get discouraged after reading so many first-hand accounts of parents whose children are murdered, or people who are tortured and left for dead, or who are brutalized by evil governments, where the perpetrator (in most cases) gets off scott free and is in no way repentant. Now, justice will ultimately be done when the perpetrators have to face God, but as I said before, you wouldn't really know that reading the book.


CONCLUSION
If you really want to read this book, it's not horrible, I wouldn't tell you that you need to run. I just would never recommend it either.

[Alexandru Balaur]

Weak for theology. But great for experience.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is a Hard Law ... that when a deep injury is done to us, we never recover until we forgive. - Alan Paton
OR
It may be infinitely worse to refuse to forgive than to murder, because the latter may be in impulse of a moment of heat, whereas the former is a cold and deliberate choice of the heart.
- George Macdonald

[Camilla Nourie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was recommended by a friend. I started it last year but put it down after struggling to see the jump from lack forgiveness to murder. Recently picked it back up, and while I think it was great to hear stories of people finding forgiveness for a range of experiences, I don’t know that it provides helpful insight on how to reach it

[Rold Palacios · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cada historia muestra un nivel de perdon extrordinario que nos enseña hasta punto debemos perdonar.
Pordonarnos a nosotros mismo y en especial perdonar a Dios cuando nos hemos llenado de resentimiento.

[Timothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was life-changing. Much thanks to the person who recommended it to me.

[Skylar Burris · Rating 2 out of 5]

A decent general book on forgiveness from a Christian perspective, but not a helpful one from a practical perspective. It is full of stories of individuals who have forgiven a wide variety of injuries, but doesn't say much of anything about how they go there. There are some good literary quotes throughout. The “response” from Mumia Abu-Jamal at the end was a turn-off.

[Ruthann Parker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for learning how and why to forgive!